


Sleeping Arrangements

by ilovehowyouletmefall



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Angst, Death Fic, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-15
Updated: 2014-10-15
Packaged: 2018-02-21 06:34:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2458385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilovehowyouletmefall/pseuds/ilovehowyouletmefall
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"After Jenny was killed, I had dreams that she was still alive, that I saved her."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sleeping Arrangements

On the first night afterwards, Giles sleeps in a motel. It's bland and time-worn, with a mini bar and plastic covers on the lampshades, feeling somehow distant from real life, in the way that all motel rooms do. It offers a possibility of forgetting. But it's not quite distant enough.

When he falls asleep, his dreams are violent and chaotic, each image and scene bleeding into the next without reason or warning. The scent of roses turning into smoke; music looming over him like a demon, just out of sight; and everywhere, fire.

Throughout it all, Jenny is a presence, always beyond his reach. Something is wrong with her, her neck, her eyes, and Giles can't get to her, but she's there. Jenny is there.

Which is more than the waking world has going for it.

There's a staff meeting where they're told, as they always are, to cooperate with any police investigation, but otherwise to go about their business as usual. Some of the teachers have tears in their eyes. Part way through the meeting, Giles excuses himself and walks out. No one tries to stop him, or says anything. No one looks him in the eye.

On the second night, the dreams are the same.

In the library, he catches Buffy's friends throwing worried glances his way. He appreciates their concern. He wishes he didn't have to.

The third night, the same.

Giles carries on, as he's supposed to, as he must.

The night before the funeral, he imagines what it will be like. Listening to acquaintances, who knew so little about her, sharing shallow reminicences. Accepting awkward condolences from colleagues who look at him shifty-eyed and abruptly stop talking whenever he enters the staff lounge. Seeing her friends, who may not even know about him. Having to explain what he and Jenny had been – they were seeing each other, they'd broken up, they were in love.

He wonders if any of Jenny's family will be there.

Giles gets black-out drunk that night. He doesn't dream at all.

It's mid-afternoon when he's woken by someone knocking on his door. Buffy.

“I'm fine,” Giles says, before she can ask.

“It's over,” Buffy tells him, like she knows he'll be relieved to hear it. “Willow went, and she said it was nice.”

“Thank you,” he says.

“If you still want to go-” The rest of the sentence gets caught in her throat. She stares at her feet, brow furrowed, and takes a breath. “If you still want to go to the cemetery,” she looks up again, and finishes softly, “I'll come with you.”

He nods.

* * *

Giles goes back to his apartment. He only intends to stay there until he has the time to find some place else to live. He sleeps on the couch.

He dreams about killing Angel. The stake feels heavy and solid in his hand; it meets resistance as he drives it through the vampire's heart, resistance that suddenly gives way in a shower of dust.

And Jenny is there. He reaches for her, to draw her close, but his fingers pass through empty space. Words spill from his lips, that he loves her, how relieved he is that she's alive, and he wants to kiss her, but there's still more to say. He describes how he felt during every moment they spent together. He wants to kiss her, but he can't stop talking. Jenny is talking too, saying that she wants him to know everything. She tells him about her life, and her parents', and her grandparents', and every ancestor going back and back. Giles reaches for her, and realizes that she's already in his arms. She's there, but without mass or substance. She's clinging to him, but he can't feel her. He wants to kiss her, but he can't.

He wakes up, and realizes that the sense of anxiety and pervasive wrongness had only been caused by a dream. A moment of calm washes over him, before he remembers that Jenny is dead.

Giles decides that he has to leave. He gets up, and is at the door when it occurs to him that wandering the streets of Sunnydale in the middle of the night, half-asleep and unarmed, is not a wise choice. And Watchers must make wise choices.

Instead, Giles digs out his stash of cigarettes, and goes into the courtyard to smoke.

Once, Jenny had been alive in that spot. In a skirt that swished around her ankles, and beautiful in the golden light of sunset. More than beautiful. Smiling and brilliant and alive.

Giles stays outside,cigarettes burning down between his fingers, glowing faintly in the dark, until his eyelids grow heavy and it's a struggle to remain sitting upright. Then he goes back inside and falls asleep.

The next day, and the days following, Giles stays at the library later than is strictly necessary. He reads until the words blur together, until he forgets which language the text is written in. He goes home and collapses in exhaustion on the couch.

At first, it works. Then the dreams start again. Jenny, alive but immaterial.

When he wakes up, Giles considers getting drunk, or chain-smoking into oblivion, or roaming through cemeteries, challenging vampires to fights. He ends up just sitting in the dark.

A couple of months ago, they'd been on that couch together, one of Jenny's hands in his hair, the other teasing at the buttons of his shirt. He calls up the memory of how it felt to brush her hair out of her face before she leaned in to kiss him. Her eyes alight and her voice purring as she said, “I like it here.”

“Do you?”

“Mm,” she hummed. “It feels like you.” She looked at his lips instead of his eyes when she said it, and there was nothing flippant or flirtatious in her voice.

He thought about telling her he loved her. Instead, he asked, “Do you want to stay?”

She hesitated. She was still recovering, still being careful.

“Just to stay,” Giles clarified. He had no expectations.

Jenny smiled, and kissed him, and spent the night in his bed.

Knowing that she's gone is a weight on Giles' chest, crushing, suffocating. And with it is the knowledge that all the memories that are so clear to him now, will fade. They will burn down with time, and crumble like ashes through his fingers.

He decides against moving to a new apartment. He gets rid of his sheets, and pillows, and mattress; but he keeps the bed.

* * *

On the first night he sleeps in his bed again, Giles wakes up with Jenny besides him, sunlight gilding her hair, sheets gathered at her waist. She smiles lazily at him.

“Morning, England.”

His heart thunders in his chest. He's deliriously happy, and relieved, but he can't remember why.

“I love you,” he says, and Jenny's smile is like the sun. She slides closer to him, and her lips are warm and soft, as is her touch, as are the two of them, together.

“I love you,” he says, and Jenny's smile is like the sun. She slides closer to him, warm and soft.

“I love you,” he says. Jenny smiles and slides closer to him. Giles feels like this has happened before.

“I love you.”

Jenny stretches and sits up. Giles traces his fingers down her spine. She shivers.

“I'm going to take a shower,” she says, and climbs out of bed. “Come with me?”

Everything about her, her body, her invitation, is familiar and real. Giles swings his legs over the side of the bed.

He wakes up. He wonders why he's still in bed. Why it's suddenly night. He remembers that Jenny is dead.

At school, Buffy and her friends continue to look at Giles with concern, and certain teachers continue to look at him with suspicion. Neither bothers him. He keeps the rose quartz necklace in his pocket, and reaches for it throughout the day, tracing it's edges with his fingers. His exhaustion gives everything a surreal haze, it all feels _wrong_ without her.

There's a poltergeist in the school. It isn't Jenny.

The night after the exorcism, Giles wakes up with Jenny besides him.

“Morning, England,” she says, sunlight gilding her hair, sheets gathered at her waist.

“This is a dream,” Giles says.

The next time he falls asleep, Giles dreams that he's ten years old, at his home in England. He's in the garden, and there's a dead bird at his feet.

 

 


End file.
